Dead Man's Grip

asked.’

17
    Specially trained Family Liaison Officers were used whenever possible but, depending on circumstances and availability, any member of the police force could find themselves delivering a death message. It was the least popular duty, and officers of the Road Policing Unit tended, reluctantly, to get the lion’s share.
    PC Tony Omotoso was a muscular, stocky black officer with ten years’ experience in the unit, who’d once had his own brush with death on a police motorcycle. Despite all the horrors he had seen, and experienced personally, he remained cheerful and positive, and was always courteous, even to the worst offenders he encountered.
    His first task had been to make next-of-kin enquiries from the information that he’d found in the victim’s rucksack, which had been lying underneath the lorry. The most useful item in it had been the deceased’s student card from Brighton University.
    A visit to the registrar’s office at the university had revealed that Tony Revere was a US citizen, twenty-one years old and cohabiting with another student, Susan Caplan, who was English, from Brighton. No one had seen her on campus today and she wasn’t due to attend any lectures until tomorrow, so it was likely that she was at home. The university had the contact details of Revere’s family in New York, but Omotoso and the registrar made the decision that Susan Caplan should be informed first. Hopefully she would have more details about him and would be able to formally identify his body.
    As much for moral support as anything else, Omotoso drove back down to the incident scene and collected his regular shift partner, PC Ian Upperton. A tall, lean officer with fair hair cropped to a fuzz, Upperton had a young family. Bad accidents were a part of his everyday routine, but those involving youngsters, such as this, were the ones he took home with him, like most officers.
    He greeted PC Omotoso’s request to join him with a resigned
shrug. In the Road Policing Unit you learned to get on with the job, however grim. And once a week, on average, it would be really grim. Last Sunday afternoon, he had found himself sweeping up the body parts of a motorcyclist. Three days later he was now heading off to deliver a death message.
    If you allowed it to get to you, you were sunk, so he tried as hard as he could never to let it. But sometimes, like now, he just couldn’t help it. Particularly as he himself had recently bought a bicycle.
    They were both silent as Tony Omotoso drove the marked police car slowly down Westbourne Villas, a wide street that ran south from New Church Road to the seafront. Both of them peered out at the numbers on the large detached and semi-detached Victorian properties. Every few seconds the wipers made a sudden clunk-clunk against the light drizzle, then fell silent. Ahead of them, beyond the end of the street, the restless waters of the English Channel were a dark, ominous grey.
    Like their hearts.
    ‘Coming up on the right,’ Upperton said.
    They parked the car outside a semi-detached house that looked surprisingly smart for student accommodation, then walked along the black and white tiled path to the front door, tugging on their caps. Both of them looked at the Entryphone panel with its list of names. Number 8 read: Caplan/Revere .
    PC Omotoso pressed the button.
    Both of them were secretly hoping there would be no answer.
    There wasn’t.
    He pressed the buzzer again. Give it a few more tries, then they could leave and with any luck it might become someone else’s problem.
    But to his dismay there was a crackle of static, followed by a sleepy-sounding voice.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Susan Caplan?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes. Who is it?’
    ‘Sussex Police. May we come in, please?’
    There was a silence lasting a couple of seconds but felt much longer. Then, ‘Police, did you say?’
    Omotoso and Upperton shot each other a glance. They were both experienced enough to know that a knock on the door from the police was something that was rarely welcomed.
    ‘Yes. We’d like to speak to you, please,’ Omotoso said pleasantly but firmly.
    ‘Uh – yuh. Come up to the second floor, door at the top. Are you calling about my handbag?’
    ‘Your handbag?’ he said, thrown by the question.
    Moments later there was a rasping buzz, followed by a sharp click. Omotoso pushed the door open and they went into a hallway which smelled of last night’s cooking – something involving boiled vegetables